Why Do You March?
By Mildred C. Fallen
On Dr. Martin Luther King Day, my friend, whom I’ll call “Bishop,” called me around 8:30 wanting to know if I had the day off and what I was doing. I told him our Public Allies class was celebrating a day in service—“a day on, not off,” and was participating in the Martin Luther King Jr. Coalition’s march from the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. Bishop groaned.
At first, Bishop seemed to feel sorry for me that I didn’t “get to stay home,” and told me how cold it was that morning when he left to go work. Then, with sarcasm, he told me some of his co-workers, who are a generation older than us, march every year. “I don’t get that,” he said. Why are people still marching?”
We laughed at his cynical observation after he described how he is judged for not participating in the march with his co-workers,like he’s a discredit to Dr. King’s legacy and his race. For me, it was funny, largely, because I know Bishop well enough to know that he was really asking, “What does marching do, in terms of service in 2012? And how does it help people after MLK day? I can bet that if Bishop asked his middle-aged African-American co-workers who attend the marches faithfully with their civic organizations why they march, and with the same sarcasm, to them, he might’ve sounded ungrateful for the legacy King’s work imparted on America.
But for Bishop’s and my generation, the generation born a decade after the Civil Rights Movement, this legacy came to us skewed, by talking heads tip-toeing the subject of Black History, and textbooks that summarized the Civil Rights Movement—which lasted two decades—into one or two dry paragraphs. By the time Bishop and I were born, the Black Power Movement looked more like Soul Train dancers; and grassroots leadership was becoming an ambiguous notion as corporate America and government became more involved than “the people.” By the 1970s, Americans were more divided by social and economic factions than ever before since slavery. In retrospect, the word “community” must’ve sounded like a misnomer to most people, who were turning inward and concentrating on self-preservation, or “getting ahead.”
In the mid to late 70s, racism wasn’t being denied access to institutions or service, but it was the fine print in government sanctioned regulations that still made us economically disparaged as a community. Growing up, I heard some of my neighborhood’s elders blame integration for the fall of the black community. I can’t say I don’t understand now, what they meant, because as an adult thinking about what integration implies, it’s like the happy ending in a Disney film because it assumes what everyone wants to see after witnessing “moments” of peril. Elders who felt this way lived through the pages in history our textbooks couldn’t contextualize, remembering a time when they were happy living in their microcosmic neighborhood, now watching in silent fear while the assets of living in a black community depleted, as drug dealers and gangs slowly pushed away the family-owned businesses that provided services and goods to them.
Urban sprawl that helped connect the city to the suburbs also made people spend time in their own neighborhoods less and less, and spending time outside of the neighborhood helped you learn what other neighborhoods offered, but sadly, it made many people I grew up around see their own neighborhoods as deficit based. Rightfully so, people wanted to move to where they felt they could have better opportunities, but that didn’t change the plight of the people who had no choice but to stay where they were. Madison Avenue and television marketed the image of an upper middle class that wasn’t reflective in many homes, and for some people, the bootstrap ideology was bunk. Over the sitcom’s laugh track, you could almost hear this overwhelming cry from poor people of all races: “Where is my piece of the pie? I’ve worked hard my whole life?”
Bishop and I come from similar life experiences and relate to each other so well that when he asked the question, “Why do people still march,” I knew he wasn’t being ungrateful to King’s legacy. As children, going beyond the grumblings of our elders who wished things were different, we always dreamed and planned how we would make a difference. Maybe to Bishop, marching on MLK Day in the 21st century placates people’s need to feel like we’re making a difference by remembering the one person we like to think of as the face of the Civil Rights Movement.
This MLK Day, I did march. Maybe on the surface to someone else, it just looked symbolic. But I wasn’t just marching out of compliance to my organization. I marched with reverence and consciousness for the men and women of all ages and races who marched before me so that I can have the things I have today, which are choices. When I think of service, I want to continue reflecting on how the work I do will serve someone else in a way that reminds him or her that no matter what skin we’re in, someone fought—and still fights-- for everyone’s right to choose where they spend their money, where they can live, worship, work and socialize. I march thinking of those mighty fighters who go unmentioned beside Dr. King.
And maybe next MLK Day, Bishop will march with me.
